We revisit the classic problem of tax competition in the context of federal nations, and derive a positive theory of partial decentralization. A capital poor median voter wants to use capital taxes to provide public goods. This results in redistributive public good provision. As a consequence,...

We show that Ricardian equivalence holds for local public finance if and only if subnational units use property taxes. However, for other tax bases, the unique equilibrium has the same economic outcome as in models where districts may not issue debt.

Hatfield and Milgrom [Hatfield, John William, Milgrom, Paul R., 2005. Matching with contracts. Amer. Econ. Rev. 95, 913-935] present a unified model of matching with contracts, which includes the standard two-sided matching and some package auction models as special cases. They show that the...

We study the effect of different school choice mechanisms on schools' incentives for quality improvement. To do so, we introduce the following criterion: A mechanism respects improvements of school quality if each school becomes weakly better whenever that school improves and thereby becomes...

We provide an illustration of how the design of labor market clearing mechanisms can affect incentives for human capital acquisition. Specifically, we extend the labor market matching model (with discrete transfers) of Kelso and Crawford (1982) to incorporate the possibility that agents may...

We introduce a model in which firms trade goods via bilateral contracts which specify a buyer, a seller, and the terms of the exchange. This setting subsumes (many-to-many) matching with contracts, as well as supply chain matching. When firms' relationships do not exhibit a supply chain...

We use the supply chain matching framework to study the effects of firm exit. We show that the exit of an initial supplier or end consumer has monotonic effects on the welfare of initial suppliers and end consumers but may simultaneously have positive and negative effects on intermediaries....

We examine the question of how competition between governments within metropolitan areas affects economic growth outcomes. Using data on metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States, we find that the number of county governments is significantly and positively correlated with the...

We introduce a model in which firms trade goods via bilateral contracts which specify a buyer, a seller, and the terms of the exchange. This setting subsumes (many-to- many) matching with contracts, as well as supply chain matching. When firms' relationships do not exhibit a supply chain...